New Partnership to Preserve Australia’s Arts History

Announced today, the Australian Creative Histories and Futures project is a new major research infrastructure initiative that will enable extensive cultural data about the creative arts in Australia to be made accessible to researchers, policymakers, arts organisations and artists. 

The 4-year project will be led by UNSW, in partnership with the ARDC, Flinders University, Creative Australia and ACMI.

The ARDC, through its HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons, is co-investing $2.9 million in the initiative, alongside co-investment from the partners that brings the project’s total investment to $5.8 million.

“The Australian Creative Histories and Futures project aims to preserve and make Australia’s rich cultural history accessible. In doing so, it will enable strategists, policymakers and arts organisations alike to use the data to make informed decisions about the best ways to support future arts projects and communities,” says Professor Claire Annesley, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture (ADA) at UNSW.

“It will also be a rich resource for researchers looking into Australia’s creative history. 

“In our increasingly connected world, it’s important that information about our cultural heritage is preserved and made available to all.”

 A key focus area for the project is on how Indigenous cultural and creative data is kept and shared.

“This project presents a unique opportunity to repair historical shortcomings in data management and to shape futures that support the Indigenous governance of Indigenous cultural and creative data,” according to ADA’s co-Associate Deans Research (Indigenous) Liza-Mare Syron and Fabri Blacklock.

Drawing on her experience and knowledge of the arts sector, Associate Professor Liza-Mare Syron will work with Indigenous Research Fellow Neenah Gray, to ensure best practice models of Indigenous data governance are developed. 

Jenny Fewster, Director of the ARDC’s HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons, said, “We’re excited to recognise the value of national research infrastructure for the creative arts through expanding the HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons. Until now, data about Australia’s creative outputs has been fragmented and under acknowledged. This new project will usher in a new era of data-driven research and decision making for Australia’s creative arts sector.”

The new project is part of the ARDC’s HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons, which is establishing long-term, enduring national digital research infrastructure.

Australia’s culture is extensive, dynamic and ever-evolving, and so too is its cultural data, says Dr Caroline Wake, UNSW School of the Arts & Media and co-lead for the Australian Creative Histories and Futures project.

“We now have significant collections of data, from the visual arts, for example, via Design & Art Australia Online (DAAO); the performing arts via AusStage, the Australian live performance database; screen culture including film, television, videogames and art (ACMI collection); and literature, via AustLit. And there are other datasets too, such as those held by Creative Australia.”

AusStage, which was recently included in UNESCO’s Australian Memory of the World register, has approximately half a million records about the performing arts in Australia. Design & Art Australia Online (DAAO) is an open source, freely accessible scholarly data e-Research tool, with 30,000 individual entries (1860 Indigenous cultural entries) making it one of the largest databases on artist careers and works in the world. Similarly, Creative Australia (formerly the Australia Council for the Arts) holds data covering its five decades of activity.

The problem is that these major cultural datasets – AusStage, DAAO and Creative Australia – have different ways of storing information and are not currently interoperable, meaning they need to be searched separately.

 “The arts are lived by artists and by audiences as an ecosystem that is in constant cross-feed. This project will make this rich ecosystem more visible, and by doing so, it will help us to tell better stories about how our arts and culture sustain us – why they are so important and what the best policy settings are to nurture thriving creative communities and careers,” says Dr Bryoni Trezise, UNSW School of the Arts & Media and co-lead for the Australian Creative Histories and Futures project.

“This project brings together a group of committed partners who will upgrade, integrate and future-proof important tools and resources, including AusStage and DAAO,” says UNSW Professor Grainne Moran, Pro Vice-Chancellor Research Infrastructure.

“It builds on work by many in the creative arts and aims to provide a strong foundation for preserving and studying the aesthetic and economic contributions that the arts make to Australian culture. UNSW is excited to be leading the project, with the ARDC providing strong support and data expertise.”

Learn more about Australian Creative Histories and Futures.

Australian Creative Histories and Futures received investment (doi.org/10.3565/3t64-zy41) from the ARDC. The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).

Read the UNSW media release, Creative Australia media release and Flinders University media release.